Last year directors Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette documented the telling and retelling of perhaps the dirtiest joke ever told, in their film, "The Aristocrats." The documentary examines how each comic telling the joke makes it their own, by maximizing the joke's setup with their own personal series of thoroughly disgusting events that lead up to the punchline: "The Aristocrats."
While most took the film as an exercise to reveal the deep-ceded, dark motif that lines the inner-working of the comic mind, I asked director Provenza if it was not actually, a metaphor for the most abhorrent joke ever played on America?
While Provenza didn't admit that I was right - or wrong - he did let me tell him the joke I thought to be the one that one-upped "The Aristocrats."
It goes something like this.
A Neocon walks into President Bush's office and says, "I've got the greatest foreign policy you've ever seen."
President Bush says, "Great, I'm always looking for a good foreign policy. Tell me about it."
"Okay," says the Neocon. "We wait for a national tragedy; a diabolical attack on our land. You know, something that can bring the country together and at the same time make the people numb to any form of common sense from that point on. Next, we attack the people behind the tragedy. You know, keeping the world and the voters behind you."
"I like it," says Bush. "Go on."
"Well," says the Neocon, "this is when you ask for enough incriminating evidence to invade this sovereign country and throw out this fuckface leader who no one likes anyway."
"So far so good, but what if we don't get the proper evidence?" asks Bush.
"That's the best part," says the Neocon. "We don't have to because the entire piss-poor, suck-ass media opens it's legs for you like a two-bit hooker and they help you shove every piece of shit down the country's throat since they'll eat any crap you serve up to them because, get this, you pick up a bullhorn and say 'I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!'"
"I don't get it," says the President. "How do I get away with that crap just by saying 'I hear them?' And anyway, didn't the people who knocked down the buildings die when their planes hit the buildings.'"
"Sure," said the Neocon, "But people will want to make sure you get the people behind the people who 3,000 innocent Americans."
"Bin Laden?"
"No, Saddam."
"Um. I don't get it."
"That's the point. You don't have to, 'cause about thirty seconds after you start the war, you just say it's over."
"Wow. We win that fast."
"Nah. You don't have to win. You just have to say we won."
"Cool," says the President. "Do I get to wear a jet fighter uniform."
"Sure."
"Fuckin' A!"
"Here's the kicker," says the Neocon. "The war you said we won continues for years, kills thousands of young Americans soldiers, tens more thousands of Iraqi citizens who didn't ask us to invade, run up trillions in debt and cuts benefits for men and women who have fought for the very freedoms you say we're fighting for now. Any person questioning the policy is trashed by your administration and demonized as traitors by a bunch of talk radio pricks who care way more about a fucking dollar than they do about the young soldiers without proper body armor who come home in boxes because of the fucking bullshit they say is actually freedom on the march. You allow torture, spy on Americans without a warrant, hold prisoners - most of whom are found to be innocent - without access to lawyers, render the rest to countries who you know will tear out their fingernails one by one. And with all that, you're still able to take month-long vacations only flying back to Washington to sign a bill that ignores all scientific evidence substantiating a brain-dead, comatose woman to be, in fact, a brain-dead, comatose woman.
"And then for the grand finale... You take one humongous dump on the Constitution. All this, based on fuckin' lies."
"Great," says the President. "What do you call it?"
BEAT.
"The Aristocrats."
Wow," says the President. "Got anything else?"
"You bet," says the Neocon. "A hurricane approaches the Gulf Coast..."